You have often heard it declared that "what is one man's meat is another man's poison."

If you believe this, then you must believe that a normal diet for man, to be at all wide in scope, could not be.

If one man's meat is another man's poison, then nothing but individual custom and habit have made it so, for basically we are all the same thing, made out of the same universal clay of the earthy soil, and all supported by this same soil, so fundamentally what is good for one man is good for all, habit alone excluded from the count.

A strictly normal diet for man is without doubt the diet recommended for Adam and Eve, but convention is so widely separated from Nature that this diet today is looked upon as a freak of some diseased or very erratic mind, and its followers are under suspicion of being early candidates for the insane asylum.

The best we can do, in attempting to regain even a modified approach to normal diet from our widely divergent standard, is perhaps to accentuate the vital foods a little more, to exclude the worst of the devitalized group, to limit the concentrated foods markedly, and to combine into compatible groups all the foods to be eaten every day.

This will be at least a near enough approach to permit of a decided acid reduction in the body, as such arrangement would limit acid formation almost to the vanishing point, and thus allow the body opportunity to eliminate the chiefest of the encumbering acid toxins. This would mean an approach to health that would be most gratifying to any one who follows conventional habits in both the selection and the insane combination of his daily foods.

So if you will interpret what is said as referring to this compromise diet, all the time realizing that it is not the ideal normal by long odds but a possible approach to the liveable condition, then we will proceed to outline what would be to the average person a "normal diet."

First let us get rid of this accepted idea that any modification of conventional habit in foods is diet, for diet is a restriction of eating for some definite purpose, as the relief from some specific diseased state. What we mean here by diet is nothing of the kind, but merely a normalizing of the daily intake of foods to bring this measurably toward the ideal.

The writer does not believe in diet as generally accepted, except in certain very limited conditions where certain foods are taboo (as concentrated protein in nephritis or the carbohydrates in diabetes), and these only for a time, till the crippled function can be partly restored through rest and rebuilding of vitality.

Anything less than this should never be called diet, but rather scientific eating.

As eating is one of our necessary fundamental functions, surely there must be a science governing this; and if so, what more important consideration is there in our daily lives than this very vital one of daily nourishment for our body?

It has been remarked before that the body is composed of sixteen constant chemical elements and their salts, and that fundamental eating, eating to restore the body, should embrace the entire list; so no habits of eating that do not do this can by any sophistry be made to appear as foods, because not restorative of the body deficiencies, which we have said is the one and only excuse for eating at any time.

This then must be the first condition of normal so-called diet: that it restore to the body everything that the body expends daily in form either of body structure or body fuels.

Normal diet, aside from this ability to restore, must be of such character that no great burden is needlessly placed on any part of the digestive or eliminative functions, as by the use of a great over' plus of concentrated food such as meat.

It must not contain a great excess of the concentrated fuel foods, as the starchy or sweet or fatty substances, as these if used in excess will accumulate in the system in the form of carbon compounds and so interfere with function by their presence and their acid-forming tendencies.

It must not contain in one task any incompatibilities, since the digestive organs can accommodate themselves to but one distinctive task at one time, requiring either acid or alkalin conditions in the stomach. Even the school boy realises that nothing can be both acid and alkalin at one time.

It must contain enough bulk to permit of undigested residues for action by the muscular coat of the colon, else we cease to have normal activity of this receptacle.

Now, can we make a so-called diet fit these various but absolutely necessary conditions?

We will not only have to do this but at the same time retain enough of the pleasures of the table to attract the average well' fed man or woman, else we can accomplish nothing in a work of this kind, since human nature is loth to give up something with which it is familiar and well pleased for something untried, unless this is made to convince him of its great superiority over his accepted standards.

First, as to competency of nourishment or full replacement value, we are forced back to the Garden of Eden standard very largely, as all processed foods are deficient in some or many particulars, and not only is this true, but every cooked food is also deficient in some particulars.

So the normal diet must include much of these Edenic foods, if we are to avoid running short of necessities.

These are the salads, fruits, and nuts, you will remember, so to be normal these will have to be included in the normal diet to large extent.

We must include the cooked vegetable foods for the reason that we cannot separate ourselves from these under our present system of living, so all we can do to normalise these even approximately is to so cook them that they are not overdone or completely destroyed by heat and to conserve all their soluble salts, which are usually lost with the ordinary forms of open cooking. This is especially so with the class of cooks that still believe it fine art to parboil and drain all vegetables, to remove the "crude" flavor from them.